When Maeve, fourth daughter of Lord Sean of Sevenwaters, is asked to accompany a skittish horse back to her father's keep, she agrees - reluctantly. For it has been many years since she left the place where her hands were crippled by a fire - years in which she has nurtured her special talent with animals. Sevenwaters is also much changed. It is now enslaved by the fey prince Mac Dara, a force of malignant magic who is responsible for a party of travellers disappearing. When Maeve discovers the body of one of the missing men, she and her brother Finbar are lured to the Otherworld on a journey that may save Sevenwaters... or lead to catastrophe. If Maeve is ever to dream of a future, she must confront the darkness of her past.